


Revolution-Flavored Cookies

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Series: today college, tomorrow the world [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius lures people to his poli-sci club with cookies, and Enjolras disapproves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revolution-Flavored Cookies

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a very silly all-caps text conversation with a friend. I know next to nothing about college, and I wrote most of this in the middle of the night.

Enjolras shook his head. This Pontmercy kid was… enthusiastic. (Combeferre tells him he needs to work on being nicer to people, otherwise he’d say something more along the lines of ridiculous.) But Marius Pontmercy’s poli-sci club, of which he was the founder, president, vice-president, and sole member, was advertising, of all things, cookies at their next meeting. “There is no place for dessert in a serious discussion about politics,” he said, glaring at the brochure laying on the table as if it had insulted his mother, his country, and his political beliefs.  
“Dessert has a place everywhere,” said Courfeyrac. “Including politics. ‘Let them eat cake,’ anyone?”  
“Marie Antoinette never said that!” said Enjolras. “You should know better by now-”  
“Guys. It’s too early for you to be arguing about cake,” said Combeferre tiredly, sipping his third cup of coffee. “Why don’t we give it a chance? You were the one saying we need more people.”  
“Not the type of people who only come for the food.”  
“Everyone has to start somewhere,” said Courfeyrac. “I only came to your first meeting because you promised to buy me drinks and introduce me to attractive upperclassmen and -women. We should give it a chance.”  
Enjolras sighed, but Courfeyrac was right. They did need to get their membership up somehow if Les Amis ever wanted to get anything done.  
But not through silly means like cookies and tacky brochures.  
Marius was excited. He had been able to get five people to sign up after he’d gone campaigning. Okay, one of them was Eponine and campaigning meant standing on the quad handing out brochures along with free cookies he’d baked in a chemical oven, but still. It was a start. And they had a good location, too: the back room of one of the most popular cafes on campus that had changed names so many times that everyone called it something different. Some called it the Musain and others the ABC, but the current official name was Barricade Cafe. (Which led to frequent cries of “To the Barricade!” among hungry and thirsty students.)  
The first one there- besides Eponine, who was hovering behind him, picking away at the cookies- was Cosette, and all thoughts of politics left Marius’s brain entirely. He managed to stutter out a greeting before Eponine elbowed him in the ribs, and he said, “Right. Yes. Welcome.”  
Cosette laughed, and he forgot about politics again.  
Three people came in together, joking and laughing loudly, but he was trying to figure out what to say to Cosette, who was asking him about his classes. It was pathetic, really, he thought. He was fluent in three languages and he couldn’t find words in one.  
She sat on the other side of Eponine for the start of the meeting, which was good, because then he could avoid looking at her and losing his train of thought. He managed to get a pretty decent discussion going, between himself, the three other guys whose names he promptly forgot, and Cosette. Eponine was occupied by the cookies and he was unable to form rational arguments to anything Cosette said, but he couldn’t complain. Until three more older guys showed up, the ones who apparently had their own activism club or something, who always seemed to travel together. They were more than a little bit intimidating, and they’d unfortunately chosen to appear at the exact moment when discussion broke down into Eponine and the guy he thought was called Bossuet fighting over the last cookie and another of the guys, the one with long brown hair who might’ve been called Grantaire, declaring that as proof that people could never effectively organize to make any sort of difference in anything.  
Enjolras took one look at the chaos unfolding, most of which seemed to revolve around those stupid cookies, and almost turned around and walked away. Combeferre and Courfeyrac grabbed his arms and forced him to keep going. Everyone in the room fell silent, staring at them. “Hey,” said Courfeyrac with his patent it’s-okay-we’re-nice smile. “This is the poli-sci club meeting, right?”  
“Um. Yes.” Marius shuffled around his note cards nervously. “Yes, it is.”  
“So. Let’s talk politics,” said Enjolras, sitting down across the table from Marius, and Combeferre and Courfeyrac sat down on either side of him.  
The meeting returned to a more dignified sort of order, now that the cookies were gone, and the following discussion was better than Enjolras was expecting, even if he was biting his lip the entire time to not directly pick a fight with Marius’s unrealistic positions on pretty much every issue Enjolras cared about. He didn’t even need Combeferre’s hissed, “Don’t antagonize him.” He knew they needed Marius. So instead he fought with one of Marius’s people, an older student named Grantaire who made shockingly eloquent arguments despite how obviously drunk he was.  
When the meeting ended, everyone left except Marius and the dark-haired girl who sat next to him, didn’t speak, and rolled her eyes when he blushed and stuttered every time the blonde girl (What was her name? Colette? Cosette?) addressed him. Enjolras approached him, trying to look as unintimidating as possible and probably failing. “Marius Pontmercy.”  
“Yes?”  
“I would like to propose an alliance. I am the leader of a political activism club in search of new members and a new location.” Courfeyrac’s apartment was kind of small, Combeferre didn’t like lots of people messing up the precise order of his dorm room, and Enjolras had a new roommate. They didn’t actually have any location, but Marius didn’t need to know that. “If you give us half of the time you reserve this room for and tell your members about us, we’ll come to your meetings and help you in any way that we can.”  
“Okay.”  
Enjolras frowned. He had expected more of an argument. It couldn’t be this easy.  
It wasn’t, of course. For a while, things went smoothly. Enjolras and the five other members of Les Amis sat in the back of Marius’s meetings, not saying anything too controversial, while everyone else ate cookies and chatted about life and occasionally politics. At the end of Marius’s hour, everyone stayed, the cookies were cleared away, and Enjolras stood up to speak while Marius took his turn sitting in the back, not voicing his disagreement. Somehow they avoided conflict, and it felt like the situation was stable.  
Until one day Bossuet grabbed the first cookie, took a bite, and almost immediately started vomiting. Courfeyrac, who had been about to try one, threw it down as if it burned him. Amidst the chaos of Combeferre calling for an ambulance, Joly panicking about all the nasty diseases it could be, and Eponine and Grantaire cleaning up the vomit, Marius was sitting frozen.  
When Bossuet had been taken away and the room cleaned up, Eponine and Enjolras turned on Marius at the same time and said, “What the hell did you do?”  
It turned out that Eponine had been sneaking Marius into the chem lab for the past few months to do the baking and that Marius did not understand the word “cross-contamination.” When Marius admitted that he had been distracted that day by Cosette walking by, Enjolras face-palmed despairingly and Eponine looked as though she might rip her hair out in frustration. “That’s it, Marius. I’m not helping you anymore. Last week you almost set the place on fire, and now Bossuet has arsenic poisoning. If you screw anything else up, it’ll get blamed on me, and then I won’t be allowed in after hours.”  
He pouted. “But… ‘Ponine, please? You’ll still get into the chem lab for class.”  
It was amusing, watching someone else do the scolding for a change, thought Enjolras, as Eponine sighed deeply and said, as if explaining the most obvious thing in the world, “I can’t make meth during class, Marius. I actually have to do my classwork.”  
Shortly after that, Marius disappeared from Enjolras’s life. The poli-sci kids all kept coming to Les Amis meetings, which were now the full time, and there were no cookies. But he should’ve known better. Pontmercy may have been embarrassed but he was persistent. And had no friends outside Eponine and Courfeyrac, who had adopted him and was trying to make him somewhat respectable.  
The meeting was starting in fifteen minutes, and no one had showed up yet. Which was to be expected. Often it was just Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac for a good five minutes after the scheduled start time, but today was different, because today Marius was coming back for the first time since the Arsenic Cookie Fiasco. “Can’t you tell him not to bake anything?” said Enjolras. “It’s your oven.”  
“It’s not my oven,” said Courfeyrac. “It’s our oven. Our kitchen. Our apartment. Shared. Communal property. He has the right to bake whatever he wants in it.”  
“And you can’t tell him he can’t bring cookies or cupcakes or brownies or anything to the meeting if he wants to,” said Combeferre. “That’s his right, as a member of Les Amis.”  
“He’s not actually a member,” Enjolras grumbled, but this was one argument he was never going to win.  
“You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Combeferre continued. “He did just get disowned by his family and cut off from their financial help.”  
“Hence him, you know, living with me,” said Courfeyrac. “College housing is expensive and he’s paying for his own education now. And he’s a genius.” Enjolras raised an eyebrow, and Courfeyrac amended, “Well, not like Combeferre-level genius.” He waved down Combeferre’s modest protests. “But he’s really smart. He taught himself German. And he makes amazing souffles. And pies. I haven’t tried his cookies yet. Something about the words ‘arsenic poisoning’ kind of ruins my appetite.”  
Marius chose that moment to appear in the doorway trailing Eponine behind him, carrying a covered plate, smiling away as enthusiastically as ever. “Hey. Anyone hungry?”  
He set the plate down on the table, and Combeferre took a cookie and looked suspiciously it to Eponine, who said, “They’re safe. I was watching him the whole time.” After a moment of consideration, Courfeyrac took one as well. Enjolras declined, though the smell that wafted up from the plate was delicious and no one had vomited yet. Halfway through the meeting, he took a break from speaking to give Combeferre a turn, and he sat back in front of the cookies. While everyone’s attention was focused on Combeferre, he surreptitiously took one and stuffed it in his mouth before anyone saw. He wasn’t quick enough, because Grantaire saw and smirked and thankfully didn’t say anything, but by that point he didn’t care. Marius’s cookies tasted like childhood nostalgia and just the right amount of chocolate, and it was probably the best cookie he’d ever eaten.


End file.
